Good News, Bad News

By Norma Sadler

When I was young, a bee stung me on the arm, an unfortunate rite of passage that caused a puff of swelling around the stinger. After that, I was afraid of bees. When my husband Jeff decided years later that bees would be a fine addition to our back-to-the-land-five-acres-and-no- independence in Meridian, I was skeptical of being around hundreds of bees. But if you make a commitment to the land, and if you love honey, then maybe you try something you ought to have left alone.

“You’ll have to do all the work with the bees yourself,” I said.

 “What’s to do?” he asked. “You just put the hives out there. The bees do the work, and then you get honey.”

 Three hives later, we learned about our part of the work. Wearing safari hats with bee veils, long-sleeved shirts, jeans, and boots, we trudged across the five acres to the hives. Puffs from our smoker calmed the bees so that we could harvest the honey.

We wheelbarrowed it and the comb hundreds of feet back to our house. Our hair, our arms, and our clothes were touched by honey. The kitchen, where we ended up, became sticky as well.

Removing a beekeeping frame. Ivan Radnik.

Harvesting. Luc Viatour.

Western honey bee in Idaho. USDA.